Maximum Shelf: When They Find Me by Carter Wilson

Posted on August 24, 2026 by pagesofjulia

Maximum Shelf is the weekly Shelf Awareness feature focusing on an upcoming title we love and believe will be a great handselling opportunity for booksellers everywhere. The features are written by our editors and reviewers and the publisher has helped support the issue.

This review was published by Shelf Awareness on August 5, 2026.

Carter Wilson’s 11th novel, When They Find Me, is a super-charged thriller about family ties, the legacy of trauma, and the tension between morality and survival. The story opens with an immediate adrenaline hit: “The old man says this is where our target is hiding. Somewhere in this little town. Expanse, Colorado.” A young woman named Riven has just arrived in the cold and snow, traveling in a beat-up old RV with Boone, her brother, and their father, who calls himself Coyote. Boone and Coyote have both killed before, but their task in Expanse is to set up Riven’s first kill. The target is the man Coyote maintains ruined their lives, years ago, when they lived in Idaho–“Back when we were domesticated. Fed on routines. Sleeping in real beds. No blood on our hands, no need for constant vigilance.”

Also in Expanse, Annie Wolfe and her 12-year-old daughter, Coral, live away from mainstream society, offline and in hiding. They keep go-bags and weapons at the ready. They’ve equipped their home with a secret underground bunker. They have Harley, “the least ass-kicking dog” Annie has ever known, but she’s good at alerting. Annie fears those who may be hunting them from a past life.

On December 23, as a potentially record-breaking snowstorm descends, Riven enters what she believes to be the house of her intended target. Instead, she finds Annie. This random accident–a simple mistaken address–sets off a chain of events that will change their lives forever.

The odds of these two armed parties stumbling upon each other may seem unlikely, but Expanse is a special place. “No one in this town discusses real names,” and everyone seems to be hiding from something. Riven’s intended victim had hoped to outrun the past that brings Coyote to Colorado. Annie, his neighbor, is on the run from something else: her own old trauma, the loss of her husband, and irrevocable damage to herself and to Coral.

After their initial confrontation, Riven and Annie are joined by Coyote and Boone in Annie’s home, and they settle into their closed, snowbound environment. The three home invaders stand opposed to Annie and her dog, Harley; Coral is hidden away, hopefully in safety. Hours pass. Weapons are aimed, questions asked. The strain increases steadily as both physical and psychological threats multiply. Coyote came for revenge but insists his “pack” stay and seek a twisted “truth.” Truth is a shifting target, however, for these men and women variously hunted or hunting.

Wilson’s two narrators are flawed but sympathetic, with redemption seeming to hover just over the horizon. Riven in particular seems poised on the edge of a major change: “And here I remain, the one with all the power. The power to choose. The power to kill. The choice of being an animal or human.” This will-she-or-won’t-she charge contributes to the general unease.

Alternating chapters are told from the two women’s first-person perspectives and move between the present setting–December in Expanse–and earlier times. In those flashbacks, readers slowly put together the past ordeals of the present-day antagonists. Annie, under a previous name, was married and lived in Miami. After the events leading to her husband’s murder, she barely escaped with Coral to make a new life. “All women have my kind of fury,” she posits. “All that’s needed is the trigger to unleash it.”

Riven, like Coral, witnessed terrible things as a child. Through her eyes, readers watch Coyote’s mental health deteriorate. He commands his children to stop calling him father. He calls his family a pack, says they’re on migration, demands they live by his version of an animal code: survival without sentiment. (As an Easter egg for returning fans, Coyote has named himself after a character in Wilson’s third novel, Revelation.) Coyote is entirely lost in his fantasies, but Riven remains ambivalent, closely watching her beloved brother Boone, wondering if there is any shred left of “the kid who used to sneak me extra food, who still stands a little closer to me when the old man’s voice sharpens. He’s straddling some line I can’t pull him off of. Half in the dark, half reaching for the light.”

The circumscribed setting in a secluded, snowed-in, modest home, and the expansive interior worlds of the various parties, offer a remarkable contrast. Despite spanning only a handful of hours in the present, tightly defined space, When They Find Me journeys to past timelines, memories and fantasies without sacrificing its fast pace. Riven grapples with taking agency in her own life, questioning what she remembers and who she wants to emulate. Annie’s past losses and old enemies remain ever-present for her, as she worries for Coral and avoids the ghosts she’s not ready to face. This chilling novel of suspense is accompanied by occasional pencil-shaded sketches, illustrating scenes. Each holds a hidden element that contributes to the immersive effect and sense of mystery. Taut pressure, high stakes, and compelling characters combine in this unnerving thriller from an experienced writer.

Rating: 7 Christmas songs.

Come back Friday for my interview with Wilson.

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Little One by Olivia Muenter

Posted on December 26, 2025 by pagesofjulia

A young woman’s troubled past resurfaces in this novel of psychological suspense and secrets.

Olivia Muenter’s Little One chills and entertains with the story of a young woman whose fresh start is interrupted.

Since leaving the intentional community run by her father in rural Florida, Catharine West has built herself a life from scratch in New York City. She has a successful copywriting career, visits the public library at least once a week, runs daily, and enjoys a snarky friendship over drinks with the disarming Stella, who says of Catharine’s library habit, “You do realize this isn’t actually a Nora Ephron film.” She doesn’t date much, which Stella attributes to a bad breakup or fear of change. Catharine holds people at arm’s length, privately enforcing upon herself some of the same obsessive standards she learned back at the farm, including extreme fasting and self-deprivation. She has shared her past with no one, which is why it’s so alarming when a journalist e-mails out of the blue with questions about “a little-known, now-defunct cult in central Florida.” Catharine’s carefully crafted, tightly controlled existence is threatened. But in balance with that risk hangs the chance that she might recover the one part of her past that she never meant to lose: her sister.

Little One, Muenter’s second novel (following Such a Bad Influence), follows Catharine in alternating chapters marked “Then” and “Now.” Catharine’s remembered Florida begins as idyllic, sunny, verdant, a childhood spent “chasing the coolest parts of the day, picking tomatoes at dawn, bringing each to my nose and marveling at the smell, all at once familiar and astounding.” But what began as a close-knit community with back-to-the-land ethics gradually became something sinister, sticky, and alligator-ridden in the oppressive heat.

In the present-day timeline, Catharine becomes increasingly involved with the journalist, Reese, whom she finds both attractive and off-putting. As she strings him along, giving him just enough to get back the information she needs from his unnamed source, it may be that she’s met her match. Meanwhile, readers recognize past Catharine (in her father’s steely grip) in the present one (wielding an ironclad control over her own life). Fasting becomes exercise compulsion and an obsession with willpower; the concept of hunger, in its various meanings, is central to the plot. Muenter’s expertly moody, creepy-crawly narrative is precisely paced. Secrets as off-balance as Catharine herself are released at a tantalizing rate that might just keep the reader up all night, as the novel accelerates toward a satisfyingly surprising conclusion.

This review originally ran in the November 21, 2025 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 car keys.

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Warning Signs by Tracy Sierra

Posted on December 22, 2025 by pagesofjulia

A young boy faces a variety of dangers when he enters deep snow and high mountains with his father in this enthralling novel of horror, suspense, and psychological intrigue.

Tracy Sierra (Nightwatching) conjures a terrifying narrative with Warning Signs, in which a 12-year-old boy grapples with hazards on several levels. This novel of horror and abuse is both enthralling and thought-provoking, liable to keep the reader up all night for a single-sitting read or to inspire nightmares–all worthwhile for the masterful handling of serious topics.

Chapter one introduces Zach, aged 11, his younger sister, Bonnie, and their mother, Grace. They are skiing uphill into the mountains of the American West, toward a hut where they will meet with other friends. Grace, an expert outdoorswoman, educates her young children in assessing avalanche risks, in survival, and how to manage fear. Chapter two jumps forward a year. Zach is 12, headed into the same mountains with his father, Bram. Bonnie has stayed home with a nanny; Grace is gone, for reasons not immediately explained. Where Grace was kind and patient, Bram is visibly short-tempered and exasperated. Zach fears him. They are to meet a group of men and boys at a backcountry ski hut for a fathers-and-sons ski trip, organized by Bram for the purpose of securing investments from the wealthier men he envies and courts. Zach has a role to play, but has always failed his father so far, never the rough-and-tumble, thick-skinned son Bram desires. Ironically, Zach’s skiing and outdoor survival skills (thanks to his mother) far surpass Bram’s, an imbalance that will matter in the coming days.

Over the long weekend, Warning Signs ratchets up the tension until it seems it can carry no more–and then ramps it up again. Zach is aware of at least three distinct threats: the perils of the natural world, including a very real risk of avalanche; his father’s irascible self-interest and capacity for cruelty; and a mysterious creature stalking the dark and treacherously cold high-altitude woods. Bram’s gathered group of men and boys presents a dangerous combination of skill and ignorance, hubris and machismo; Zach possesses good training and instincts, but as their youngest member, will be overlooked and ignored in an irony of Greek-tragedy proportions. Through it all, Zach (in close third-person perspective) continues to mull the absence of the dearly beloved Grace, and approach the horrifying truth about her loss.

With its triple-punch of terrors natural, human, and unknown, Sierra’s sophomore novel is truly and profoundly frightening. Beyond the fine art of the horror or thriller novel, Warning Signs also considers domestic abuse and control, class and ambition, and how we try to care for those we love. Discomfiting, chilling, and unforgettable.

This review originally ran in the December 2, 2025 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 8 lost mittens.

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The Gallagher Place by Julie Doar

Posted on November 7, 2025 by pagesofjulia

In this moody debut novel, new and old crimes on her family’s estate in upstate New York force a quietly struggling woman to confront loyalties and conflicts among family and friends.

Julie Doar’s first novel, The Gallagher Place, investigates old and new mysteries within a compelling family drama set in a striking landscape.

Protagonist Marlowe Fisher is an illustrator living on the Upper West Side and a loner, even surrounded by her powerful family and their estate. When she and her two brothers, as adults, discover a body on their property, the case reopens old wounds. Decades earlier, Marlowe’s childhood best friend vanished without a trace. The freshly murdered man and the long-missing teenaged girl do not initially appear linked, but the surrounding community has long harbored suspicions about the wealthy Fishers. Marlowe has always yearned to know what happened to Nora, although that desire presents new conflicts, having come under investigation once again.

The Fishers have always used the Gray House in upstate New York as a weekend and holiday retreat, “a wholesome family sanctuary to escape the crowded city life and the bittersweet pain of growing up too fast. A haven, her father sometimes called it. If that was the case, why did bad things still happen?” And bad things do happen, especially the disappearance of Nora Miller. Marlowe has never had another relationship as meaningful as her friendship with Nora, a local girl and an honorary, if part-time, fourth Fisher sibling, who wished desperately to escape her rural roots. Marlowe feels strongly: “Nothing mattered as much as the two of us.” The loss of Nora has shadowed Marlowe’s life ever since, culminating in a carefully hidden drinking problem.

The recent murder, and accompanying investigation into Nora’s disappearance, is both galvanizing and disturbing. As Marlowe embarks on her own inquiries, more thoroughly than ever before, she not only refreshes old pains but discovers new risks. To search for Nora means to interrogate her own memory, to learn uncomfortable truths about herself and her family, to confront class differences, privilege, and inheritances. This discomfiting process takes place in two timelines, against the backdrop of Dutchess County, N.Y., in the summers of the 1990s (when Nora and Marlowe were teenagers) and in the present winter of 2018. The Fisher property defines Marlowe’s greatest trauma and coming of age; she remains devoted to “the spirit of landscape” that inspires her art. A strong sense of place is central to this chilling novel about old secrets and what one might choose to uncover or keep hidden. The Gallagher Place is dramatically atmospheric, expertly paced, and haunting.

This review originally ran in the October 10, 2025 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 gifts.

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Haven’t Killed in Years by Amy K. Green

Posted on October 24, 2025 by pagesofjulia

The long-hidden daughter of a serial killer is caught up in a new wave of crimes in this clever, absorbing, constantly surprising novel about finding one’s own way.

Amy K. Green (The Prized Girl) presents a twisting puzzle of a thriller with Haven’t Killed in Years, starring a young woman whose hidden past resurfaces in bizarre, gruesome, and often funny ways.

“On the day my mother was released from prison I stubbed my toe four times…. It was a statistical anomaly and, in hindsight, a warning that bad things were coming my way.” In this way, readers meet Gwen Tanner, who has a boring office job, an unremarkable one-bedroom apartment, and no serious relationships. From the outside she appears to be “your standard almost-too-basic law-abiding woman approaching thirty. On the inside? Eh, not so much.” Gwen was born Marin Haggerty. When she was nine, her father was convicted on eight counts of first-degree murder (eight being just the ones they could pin on him) and both parents went to prison (her mother for aiding and abetting). Marin became Gwen and disappeared from the public eye. She has spent the past two decades building a resolutely ordinary life, hoping to avoid the fate her father intended for her: to be just like him. Her father had “also had a good job and worn nice clothes; it was the easiest way to hide in plain sight.”

But now a severed arm turns up on her doorstep, with a note: “Hi, Marin.” Someone knows Gwen’s real story. Her safe, staid lifestyle is disrupted; and more than that, Gwen is offended that someone thinks they can get the better of her. She sets out to investigate, but the clues and the characters just tangle her up further. She meets a tour guide who specializes in her father’s crimes, a group of murder-obsessed young men, and a woman from her own childhood who does not recognize her. These relationships complicate her sterile existence; she mostly accidentally finds herself making friends–who are also suspects. “When you let people into your life, there are so many details. I knew that and I had ignored my own rules anyway.” Is it time for Gwen–Marin–to come into her own as her father’s protégé? Or is she going to surprise herself and set out on her own path?

Just when this unforgettable protagonist thinks she knows who is behind which crimes, new information throws her (and readers) off track. Many scenes spin into comedies of errors, playing on constant subversions of expectations. In Gwen/Marin’s dryly cynical voice, these madcap events hit both tender and comic notes. Despite instances of poignant suffering and a noteworthy serial killer, Haven’t Killed in Years is weirdly, deeply fun.

This review originally ran in the September 29, 2025 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 8 blue drinks.

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The Wasp Trap by Mark Edwards

Posted on August 4, 2025 by pagesofjulia

Six estranged friends and colleagues gather at a sumptuous dinner party to find themselves terrorized by old secrets in this gratifying tale of suspense and psychopaths.

The Wasp Trap is an absolutely thrilling, tautly plotted puzzle of a novel by Mark Edwards. This double-locked-room mystery, with all the tension that that implies, presents a cast of well-developed characters facing various hidden challenges.

The first timeline, introduced in the novel’s prologue, takes place in July 1999. A group of recent college graduates are gathered at a country estate outside London by a charismatic psychology professor to work around the clock on a dating website meant to achieve maximum dotcom-era profits. In truth, they also work at developing a test to identify psychopaths (their mentor’s first interest). The estate is well outfitted with “fruit-colored iMacs” and age-appropriate entertainment. For a few months, in these pleasant confines, the group becomes very close. “The lothario. The salesman. The affluent couple, the joker and the local girl. Finally, me, the wordsmith, whose role was to write it all down. If any of us were a psychopath, I already had a good idea who it would be.” The bulk of the novel is narrated by Will, an aspiring writer who often feels trapped on the outside, thwarted in his attempts to connect. He is well-suited to observe the character of his counterparts, but not unbiased.

Twenty-five years later, they gather again, to commemorate the death of their former employer. Two members of the original project have married–they are the only two to have kept in touch, after what seems to have been a rocky and abrupt ending. Now “the affluent couple” hosts their old friends for a lavish dinner party in their high-security Notting Hill townhouse. But immediately the evening shifts from awkward to nightmarish, part home invasion and part sinister game. The group is commanded to reveal a secret from the storied summer of ’99. Each dinner guest denies knowing what information is sought, but each, of course, does harbor secrets. The key to The Wasp Trap‘s deliciously frightening uncertainty lies in the pain and horror of not knowing whom, in a closed environment, one can trust. The once-tight-knit group fractures amid secret and not-so-secret sexual tensions, financial pressures, and old jealousies, especially with a suspected psychopath or two in their midst.

Offering twists and turns and surprises through his novel’s final pages, Edwards executes a highly satisfying thriller with this intriguing blend of terror and nostalgia for youth and freer, more hopeful times.

This review originally ran in the July 22, 2025 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 8 cans of Pepsi.

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We Lie Here by Rachel Howzell Hall

Posted on June 9, 2025 by pagesofjulia

This tense, suspenseful thriller slipped easily along with the momentum of a well-designed plot, for the most part. There were a few hiccups in the late-middle for this reader, but the finish got me, and this author deserves a hat tip for the big reveal which in hindsight feels almost obvious, but I never did see it coming.

We meet Yara Marie Gibson when she’s on her way back to Palmdale from Los Angeles. L.A. holds her moderately successful (it’s still early) career as a writer for television, her awesome boyfriend Shane, and her young-adult life; Palmdale, in the Antelope Valley in northern Los Angeles County, is home, and it’s trying to kill her. The novel’s first line is “The city of Palmdale takes my breath away,” and she means it literally. Yara suffers from severe asthma and allergies, worsened by anxiety, which is in turn worsened by her family in general and her mother in particular, plus the fact that her mother and sister smoke cigarettes every waking moment, and indoors. Yara is highly motivated by the party she’s throwing for her parents’ twentieth wedding anniversary, a very elaborate affair for which she’s footing the bill; nobody even pretends that her younger sister Dominique is not her mother’s favorite, but Yara is driven to give her parents this gift. Her father seems loving, but Barbara Gibson (who goes by a multitude of nicknames in Yara’s first-person narrative) is the sort of figure who sucks all the oxygen out of a room – this works metaphorically as well as in the sense that Yara, again, cannot breathe here…

These 400 pages take place over just a week or so, as Yara prepares for the party while choking to death in her childhood bedroom, and a series of strange events and characters arise: mysterious long-lost family members show up and disappear, threatening messages new and old come to light, bodies are found. There are numerous fights and shouty phone calls, and old secrets from before her parents’ marriage come to light. The Gibsons are a family with some messes and dysfunction–in other words, perfectly normal, if not perfectly healthy. They are also “the only Black family on the block,” and Yara is always aware of the impact of race on her life and safety. There are links to old Black Hollywood royalty, and racism both then and now.

A plot element that threw me for much of the book was Yara’s amateur sleuthing, which is accepted as natural by so many characters, including an old friend of hers who is a sheriff’s deputy. It didn’t quite follow for me that Yara’s job as a writer for a fictional TV crime show, and her blood relationship to a recently deceased woman (potentially a murder in which Yara would be a suspect), would qualify her to get the inside information she receives from such an official source; I expected a little more leave-it-to-the-professionals. This was a minor sticking point, but it lasted long enough for me (a hundred pages or more?) to impact my experience of the book. A lot of Yara’s personality, bless her heart, is her anxiety, forgetfulness, and breathing difficulties. And (highlight white text to reveal spoilers): at the discovery that her father was married before he married her mother, Yara’s reaction is more violent than I found likely. I mean, I guess she might have heard of this before, but the way she flips out felt outsized to me. I did pause and remind myself that we don’t all react to anything in the same way; and it’s clear that Yara’s parents’ marriage carries a lot of weight for her, thus this big party. Ah well. I coached myself through it.

As I said, in the middle portion of the book, there were some draggy bits – especially as I dealt with these small but persistent questions. But it does pick back up again! My experience of the novel’s opening pages was electric: Hall grabbed me with scene, dialog, sensory detail, and a strong sense of place, and anxiety about family is pretty universally relatable; it was a great start. And by the big crescendo and denouement (including a compelling epilogue), we were right back on track and on pace. It was an enjoyable fictional world to sink into, overall: escapism, suspense, momentum. Not perfect, but well worth the price of admission.

Rating: 6-and-a-half puffs on the inhaler.

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Killer Potential by Hannah Deitch

Posted on March 28, 2025 by pagesofjulia

Two young women on the run offer mesmerizing complexity in this smart, propulsively paced, thought-provoking, and electrifying debut novel.

Hannah Deitch’s first novel, Killer Potential, is a bloody, class-conscious, suspenseful thriller starring two young women caught in a spiral of violence, blame, and bonding. This rocket-fueled debut is a deliciously dark, twisting, entertaining read, so beware the urge to stay up all night finishing it.

The novel’s primary narrator is Evie Gordon, who opens by saying, “I was once a famous murderess…. It isn’t true.” Labeled “Talented and Gifted” from the age of eight, Evie thrived on the simple, clearly outlined goals and rewards of formal education. As a graduate, she foundered and eventually landed in Los Angeles as an SAT tutor to the children of the rich and famous. On a Sunday afternoon, she appears at the Victor mansion as usual, only to find Peter and Dinah Victor very freshly and brutally murdered, and an emaciated, traumatized, and nearly mute woman tied up in a closet. In an adrenaline-fueled haze of terror and confusion, they flee the bloody scene together. The bulk of the novel follows Evie and the woman, Jae, as they go on the run, presumed to be the murderers of the Victors, and commit a series of crimes along the way.

Through Evie and Jae’s fragile, yearning, mistrustful bond, Deitch explores privilege and the divide between the haves and have-nots; sex and sexuality; trust and betrayal; what it means to be a “nice” or “good” person; and ambition and aimlessness. The interplay between them offers a taut psychological drama as backbone to a propulsive thriller of gruesome crime, exhilaration, and deception. Killer Potential is disturbing, fun, and unforgettable.

This review originally ran in the March 22, 2025 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish news.

Rating: 7 powdered doughnuts.

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The Greatest Lie of All by Jillian Cantor

Posted on October 21, 2024 by pagesofjulia

A young actress takes on the role of a glamorous romance author and gets more mystery–and romance–than she’d reckoned for.

The Greatest Lie of All by Jillian Cantor (Half Life; The Hours Count; Margot; The Lost Letter) is a propulsively paced story of intrigue, romance, and suspense starring two women a generation apart navigating family, love, secrets, and art. In one of their several parallels, each uses a professional pseudonym, so that four names delineate these two character arcs.

Readers meet the young, up-and-coming actress Amelia Grant just after the death of her beloved mother, and in the moment when she discovers her actor boyfriend in bed with his costar. At this low, Amelia is primed to accept her biggest role yet: to play the fabulously successful romance author Gloria Diamond in a biopic. Gloria had been Amelia’s mother’s favorite; it feels like a sign and a way to be close to the mother she’s lost, the only person who had called her by her birth name, Annie.

Heartbroken but determined, Amelia travels from Los Angeles to Gloria’s remote Seattle-area home to get to know her subject before filming begins. But “the Gloria Diamond” is distinctly unfriendly, cold, and dismissive. Even as Amelia finds a tentative friendship with Gloria’s son, Will (“cute, in an academic kind of way”), she despairs at ever understanding what makes the older woman tick. Gloria’s career was built on her famous, brief romance with her late husband, Will’s father. But the more Amelia learns, the less convincing that story is. She embarks on an informal investigation fueled by shadowy motives: her desire to play a “true” Gloria Diamond; her curiosity about the nature of love, especially as her mother so appreciated it in Diamond’s fiction; and Will’s reluctant desire to understand his mother. As she pursues the history of the author once known as Mary Forrester–Mare to her friends–Amelia begins to wonder about her own role in the drama unfolding before her.

In chapters that shift between Amelia’s perspective and that of the young Mare, The Greatest Lie of All shines in its plot twists and surprises, and, most of all, its pacing, which accelerates from a slow burn to a heart-thumping momentum. The tension increases, stakes rising as Gloria/Mare and Amelia/Annie must reckon with their pasts to chart their shared present. Danger accompanies every possibility of romance, and family history matters more than it originally appears. Cantor’s experienced hand shows in this classically crafted thriller, which will keep its readers tautly engaged to the final scene.

This review originally ran in the September 24, 2024 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 6 glasses of wine.

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Maximum Shelf: The Collaborators by Michael Idov

Posted on August 5, 2024 by pagesofjulia

Maximum Shelf is the weekly Shelf Awareness feature focusing on an upcoming title we love and believe will be a great handselling opportunity for booksellers everywhere. The features are written by our editors and reviewers and the publisher has helped support the issue.

This review was published by Shelf Awareness on July 17, 2024.

“When the MiG-29 swung into view, barely 50 yards portside, passenger Anton Basmanny in seat 12A didn’t feel all that surprised. In fact, he even knew the reason it was there. He was the reason…. When you were the Kremlin’s least favorite blogger, a lot could happen.” Thus opens The Collaborators, a ripping gem of a novel by Michael Idov (Ground Up; Dressed Up for a Riot) that transports readers around the world–Minsk, Moscow, London, Berlin, Los Angeles, Portugal, Morocco, and more–and through a range of geopolitical and interpersonal intrigues. Propulsively paced, and containing as much humor, romance, philosophy, and whimsy as classic spy-thriller action, this brilliant novel will charm readers and linger long after its final pages.

After beginning with the plight of the Kremlin’s least favorite blogger on board a troubled flight to Riga, Idov’s narrative jumps to an American spy at work in that capital city. “At Yale, from where the CIA recruited him, Ari Falk had been an Army ROTC scholarship student… and a Slavic literature major: half meathead, half egghead. Add a Jewish name, desperate poverty, and tense foster-kid demeanor, and the result was so difficult to parse that most peers gave up without trying.” Falk likes Riga, but his job concerns him: he may be a bit too ethical, or even sentimental, for CIA work. “Falk felt like the farmer who adopted a new shelter cat each time a coyote ate the previous one. Once you subtracted the issue of intent, he ran a coyote-feeding program.” Falk is looking for Anton Basmanny, who has not arrived as expected.

Pages later, Idov introduces Maya Chou Obrandt, an aspiring actor, daughter to a Taiwanese-American mother and a Russian-American, self-made-billionaire financier father whose death by apparent suicide has just been announced on the news–but with no body, his fate remains unknown. Idle, frustrated, she sets off to search for her missing father. “As long as she was Maya Chou Obrandt, Girl Detective, she wasn’t Maya Chou Obrandt the twice-relapsed twenty-three-year-old addict, or Maya Chou Obrandt the corpse.” On their separate but intersecting missions, Maya and Falk meet by accident at a marina in Tangier, and team up as an unlikely duo: the disaffected CIA agent and the wayward heiress, who uncover decades-old plots beyond either’s imagining.

The Collaborators features short, punchy chunks of narrative switching close-third-person perspectives between a number of characters. Anton, Falk, and Maya are joined by a Russian bagman, a British open-source intelligence innovator with no poker face, and players from various espionage agencies, all lively with idiosyncrasies and multilingual dialog. But all are not what they seem, as identities shift and allegiances come into question: a teenaged Jewish boy at a refugee camp near Rome in the 1980s exhibits commercial acumen that attracts the attention of an American spy; a striking older couple fly business class but are untraceable; Russian agents across history and an aging CIA man intersect in unexpected ways. Not all the characters whom readers will meet, and even like, survive until the novel’s end, but Idov makes every loss and gut-punch count. The action opens in 2021, but events appearing as flashbacks from the Cold War through the 1980s and ’90s strongly influence that present. Idov spins a complex plot, spanning decades and much of the globe, but it proceeds at a lively pace: beware the late-night binge read.

Idov’s many strengths include line-by-line clever riposte (“stop looking at me like I’m a talking dog,” Maya tells Falk when the latter is indeed impressed by her reasoning) and the details that make his characters individual and often lovable (a band t-shirt, a love for bad tea). Readers with an interest in the geopolitical intrigue will certainly be drawn in by modern-day plots involving telecommunications, commerce, and machinations of power, but it is equally rewarding to sink into the dramas of love affairs cut short by espionage (one character’s sacrifice is labeled Faustian by another who may face a similar choice).

Although it does excel at certain features of the espionage thriller–car chases, shootouts, and double- and triple-crosses–The Collaborators is by no means a book for genre readers alone, or even primarily. There is much to love for anyone who appreciates an engaging story, and despite its plot-related strengths–compelling pacing, adrenaline-charged action sequences–the story at heart is character-driven. Characters espouse thought-provoking philosophies and go to great lengths to navigate romances challenged by international intrigue. Despite the body count, the novel often harbors a lovely, even feel-good tone.

Idov’s intelligent, emotive spy novel is funny and sweet, as well as blood-soaked; clever and riveting in its plot twists; and focused on idiosyncratic characters first and foremost. No special expertise in Russian intrigue is required, nor even a special interest in the espionage genre. Brilliant, entertaining, rocketing, and unforgettable, The Collaborators is not to be overlooked.

Rating: 8 glasses of tea.

Come back Friday for my interview with Idov.

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